Attacks kill four NATO troops and nine Afghan civilians in one day

Four NATO service members died today in separate attacks across Afghanistan, including a suicide car bomb that targeted an international military convey as it crossed a bridge in the Taliban-dominated south, the coalition said.

Nine Afghan civilians also died in four bombings in the south, according to officials.

The deaths came as American and Afghan forces worked to consolidate control over the former insurgent stronghold of Marjah in the southern province of Helmand, where allied forces are waging the eight-year-old war's largest combined offensive.

Afghans place the body of a victim killed after his car hit a roadside bomb as it entered the city limits of Lashkar Gah

Mondays' suicide attacker waited in a station wagon taxi for the NATO convoy to cross the bridge between Kandahar city and the airport, then detonated his explosives, tossing a military vehicle into a ravine, said Inhamullah Khan, an Afghan army official at the site.

A NATO spokesman, Maj. Marcin Walczak, confirmed one service member died in the suicide bombing. He did not provide the nationality or any other details.

Four Afghan civilians died in the bridge attack, the Interior Ministry said. Three of the civilians who died were in a car that had pulled over nearby to wait for the convoy to cross the bridge, which the military regularly sweeps for explosives, Khan said.

In western Afghanistan, two other NATO troops died in a mortar or rocket attack, a military statement said, while another service member was killed by small arms fire in the south. The statement gave no other details.

Afghan policemen walk at the site of a bomb blast which killed one person and injured 17 others near police headquarters in the southern city of Kandahar today

Another official had previously said a police officer was among the dead, but Bashary said he was an office worker, not an officer.

Kandahar city is the capital of the province of the same name that is considered the spiritual birthplace of the Taliban. It lies east of Helmand province, where thousands of US, NATO and Afghan troops are conducting an offensive to wrest control of the town of Marjah from insurgents.

Marjah has long been controlled by the Taliban, and the assault is seen as the first step in a multi-month offensive that will eventually target insurgent strongholds around Kandahar city.

US and Afghan forces' advances in and around Marjah have been hampered by thousands of buried explosives left behind by the Taliban - roadside bombs that kill civilians as well as military forces.

On Monday, a civilian car hit one of the roadside bombs as it entered the city limits of Lashkar Gar, the major town north of Marjah. The blast killed three people, including a 10-year-old boy, said Dawod Ahmedi, spokesman for the Helmand provincial governor.

An Afghan policeman stands guard at a check point in a neighbourhood close to the capital Kabul

Another roadside bomb killed two employees of a construction company who were riding in a company vehicle Monday afternoon on a road north of Lashkar Gar district, an Interior Ministry statement said.

The two-week-old Marjah offensive, involving thousands of American troops along with Afghan soldiers, is the largest combined assault since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion to oust the Taliban's hard-line Islamist regime.

It is the first test of NATO's new counterinsurgency strategy since President Barack Obama ordered 30,000 new U.S. troops to Afghanistan late last year.

The allied forces have cleared most of Marjah and are now working to secure the area, though NATO has warned there could be pockets of violence for weeks.

Hundreds of Afghan police and civil servants are being brought in with the goal of establishing public services to win the support of the population.